“Um,” Jules said.
“Hello, we’re sitting right here,” Shelly piped up from the back seat, where she and Meg were prepping Mr. H’s video camera.
Jules had picked them up first, before swinging past Hobbit’s. They were meeting Tom and Belle one street over from Carter Dorbert’s house, where tonight’s party was being held. The plan was to park there, out of sight, in case Suspect X recognized their cars. They would then cut through a neighbor’s property and the woods between the two houses to hide themselves in the brush behind Carter’s backyard.
Both Rod and Sadie were showing up separately, ofcourse. In fact, Rod was probably already there. The soccer team always arrived early at these events, to help Carter tap the keg.
“Yes, I know,” Hobbit said, a tad crossly as he turned to look at the two girls. “I see you. You’re not invisible.” He looked back at Jules. “Fictional me thinks you’re an idiot for still being in love with David when I’m sitting right here. And real-life me knows you only see me as a friend. I get that. I do. But deep down, what real life me feels is closer to fictional me than I thought.”
“Hob,” Jules started.
“No, no, you don’t need to say anything.”
“I’m sorry?—”
“Why? You didn’t do anything wrong. I just wanted to explain that... After we did that scene, I needed a coupla days to... I don’t know. Grieve? Decompress? Return to reality? Maybe a little of all three? And I also wanted to apologize for going too far with the improv there, at the end. Fictional-me’s apparently kind of a dick.”
Jules knew exactly what Hobbit was referring to.Have a nice life!
“Nah,” he said. “Fictional-you was rightfully upset. Fictional-me’s the dick. And fictional-you was not wrong. Iwouldtake David back. Both fictional-me and real me. I think knowing that makes real-you sad, because you think I deserve better. And... maybe you’re right.”
“Oh, I’m right,” Hobbit said. “But, see, you’re also my best friend, so if David decided to drop out of UCLA, move in with you, and get a job downtown at Nate’s Sporting World, well, I will welcome him into our friend group and will hang out with him with only minor teeth-gritting and snark. Kinda the way we’re hanging out with Rod thesedays.” He glanced into the backseat. “No offense, Meggie, but your brother’s a raging asshole, too.”
“None taken,” the girl said. “Because yeah, I know. He can be. But he has to try really hard to be, you know, one.”
“Well, bravo to him,” Hobbit said. “He gets an A-plus for his efforts from the judges here in the front seat. And don’t think we didn’t notice the fact that you’re unable to sayasshole,missy. Give us a few more days and all kinds of colorful words will be rolling off your innocent tongue.”
Meg was giggling in the back, which was a very nice sound since her usual MO was pale and silent. As Jules glanced in his rearview, he saw that Shelly, too, was smiling.
“I really am sorry,” Jules told Hobbit, who rolled his eyes.
“I was apologizing to you, so just, like, shush,” he said. “We have things to do. Rapist to catch and kill.” He glanced at Jules. “Oops, sorry, you’re still pretending we’re not going to kill him.”
Now Jules was laughing, too. “We arenotgoing to kill him. I am not pretending.”
“Okay, Grandpa, whatever you say,” Hobbit said, giving him an exaggerated wink before he broke character and laughed, too.
Jules glanced over at him as he made the turn onto the road where they were meeting Tom and Belle. “It was only two days, but... damn, I missed you. You’re my best friend, too.”
Hobbit smiled at him. “Hearing you say that is... Well, it even makes fictional-me really happy.”
Jules slowed, turning off his headlights as he saw Tom’s car parked at the side of the road—Tom and Belle leaning against the side in the deepening twilight, dressed in the chosen attire for the night. Long-sleeved hoodies in dark colors, jeans, hiking boots, hats.
“Okay,” Jules said as he pulled in behind them and put his car into park. “Let’s catch this motherfucker.”
Rod was ready for them—he’d turned on the bright outside patio lamps to give the video camera as much light as possible. He was with his soccer friends, sitting on the picnic table where Jules and Hobbit had sat just last week.
Because this party was being held at the so-called “party central,” AKA Carter Dorbert’s house, AKA the scene of the crime in which Jules’s Dr. Pepper had been drugged, they knew the yard well. And they’d planned in advance several options for video camera placement.
And because sneaking through the brush wasn’t something any of them were particularly good at—except maybe for Hobbit, who’d learned quite a bit about stealth the few times he’d gone out hunting with his father and brothers—they relied on Rodney to distract his fellow soccer team members as they moved into position, and then shifted because video camera option one caught the glare from one of the patio spotlights and was rendered near useless.
Rod used the time-honored and totally obnoxious game of keep-away to distract, snatching the baseball cap off of one of his friends—oh, it was Rugby-Shirt Jimmy, who was wearing a somewhat staid green-and-off-white number tonight—and tossing it out of Jim’s reach to a kid named Larry as they all crashed and flailed and laughed their semi-drunk asses off in the big backyard.
But then the camera was finally in place, and they all were, too.
Hidden and watching.
Jules checked the time, as out in the yard Rod checked hisown watch. It was nearly Sadie o’clock, and Rod tossed the wayward hat back to Jim and went back to sitting on the table.
